Entries in Namco Bandai
(5)

he Ringed City expansion just dropped for Dark Souls III, and it reminded us that we’re still hunting through the kingdom of Lothric for those tasty souls. Dark Souls III is considered to be the best of the best from Hidetaka Miyazaki, as it reinvents some of the familiar combat dynamics around the Blooborne engine in the framework of the Souls franchise into a sequel that still has players hooked on it to this day.

Andrew has made it no secret that he hates these types of games, but he said what the hell, and decided to pull up seat alongside Georgie, swinging around ancient blades against nightmare demons until they died—a lot.

he Dungeon RPG has been around for a very long time. Games like Might and Magic on yesterday's Personal Computer might have cemented the sub-genre long before today's gaming environment but these days, the PlayStation Vita is where it's at from some dungeon-crawling goodness. Games such as Operation Abyss, Demon Gaze and many more have given players a lot of choice for their Dungeon-crawling needs, with mixed results. Acctil's Ray Gigant aims to take a heavy stab at the genre, but is it worth a second glance?

Well, that's very hard to say—Ray Gigant charges out of the gate with a huge number of anime and RPG tropes practically oozing all over the place. Giant catastrophe in Tokyo and abroad at the hands of giant monsters, check, central character that gets caught up but survives said catastrophe, check; how about some Living jewelry that prevented his certain demise? Check. Cast of by-the-book characters and archtypes, we’ll throw on another check. Or what about being saved by a post-apocalyptic organization looking to eradicate an enemy menace, that’s a big check right there.

And it happens to be a high school even, Double-check—it goes on and on and on.

I'm sure if layers haven’t experienced much in the line of Japanese RPGs or anime in the last, oh, 20 years, seeing all of these typical elements with fresh eyes and no previous experience might enthrall them. For the rest of us, reactions could range from single eyebrow lifting to optical nerve injuring eye rolls, and the story notwithstanding, what can we expect from the actual gameplay?

idetaka Miyazaki’s saga of “Souls” titles has left quite an impact upon the benchmark of action games, and the expectations held of its caliber—it’s almost inspired its own sort of sub-genre of gaming. With inspired contemporaries even garnering a modicum of success, it’s no wonder that Dark Souls III was announced so quickly, coming hot off the heels of From Software’s collaboration with Sony on the PS4 exclusive, Bloodborne.

Being as this is technically the fifth go-around, one has to think upon whether or not so many entries might potentially dilute the charm that make these games so exciting, and risk the danger of recycling familiar the same dynamics under a simple fresh coat of paint.

You’d be half right, but mostly wrong (don’t make me explain the math on that one, just read what I have to say) because while the familiarity of the venture is slightly fatiguing, the rush that the gameplay is famous for delivering is ever potent. Not to worry though; Dark Souls III has plenty of new features to really give this sequel the kick in you the ass that you wanted from it from the get go, and the adrenaline keeps freshness rolling from start to finish to boot.

think it’s safe to say that by this point, no one who isn’t familiar with the concept of Pokémon, even by a little bit, is a stranger to the vast expanses of its giant monster filled world. We’ve extensively covered the various spin-off titles offered by the series, but there was always one particular genre of game that was strangely missing from the lineup of titles billed around battling collectible monsters with another; a competitive fighting game.

In a collaboration with Bandai Namco and The Pokémon Company, one of the most ambitious spin-offs in the franchise has now broken ground onto the Wii U with Pokkén Tournament, a project that was headed by the same force responsible for Tekken. The potential here sounds like a match that’s worthy of Helix Fossil’s praise, but Namco Bandai’s track record with Tekken and other collaborative efforts (*cough TEKKEN VERSUS STREET FIGHTER) has been a little to spotty not be worried.

It’s definitely not as complex, or as deep as the as the source material that it stems from, but the fighting engine at work, but it is built with just the right blend of accessibility and frenetic adrenaline to please both fighting game gurus, and Pokéfanatics alike.

hether it’s some bratty millennial, or a crotchety-ass geriatric, there are a few things within pop culture that these two wildly different demographics will often times share knowledge of—they’re both aware of a particular yellow humanoid sphere with an insatiable appetite.

PAC-MAN has been a staple in video games since it first hit the arcades all those years ago, and if the new title from Hipster Whale, PAC-MAN 256, is any indication of the famous circle’s current status-quo, then he’s rest assured to continue as a staple into the future of gaming.

Ser and Georgie whip out their smartphones, and show off the new title, and it’s modernized spin on a very familiar formula, and talk about why it’s one of the coolest surprises to come out of 2015.